HISTORY CAMBRIDGE A2 (PAPER 3)PRESENTATION 17

MARSHALL PLAN 1948

REBUILDING EUROPE• In the immediate post-World War II period, Europe remained ravaged by

war and thus susceptible to exploitation by an internal and external Communist threat.

• In a June 5, 1947, speech to the graduating class at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall issued a call for a comprehensive program to rebuild Europe.

• Fanned by the fear of Communist expansion and the rapid deterioration of European economies in the winter of 1946–1947, Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in March 1948 and approved funding that would eventually rise to over $12 billion for the rebuilding of Western Europe.

MARKETS FOR AMERICAN GOODS• The Marshall Plan generated a resurgence of European industrialization and

brought extensive investment into the region. • It was also a stimulant to the U.S. economy by establishing markets for

American goods. Although the participation of the Soviet Union and East European nations was an initial possibility, Soviet concern over potential U.S. economic domination of its Eastern European satellites and Stalin’s unwillingness to open up his secret society to westerners doomed the idea.

• Furthermore, it is unlikely that the U.S. Congress would have been willing to fund the plan as generously as it did if aid also went to Soviet Bloc Communist nations.

NOBEL PRIZE• Thus the Marshall Plan was applied solely to Western Europe, precluding

any measure of Soviet Bloc cooperation. Increasingly, the economic revival of Western Europe, especially West Germany, was viewed suspiciously in Moscow.

• Economic historians have debated the precise impact of the Marshall Plan on Western Europe, but these differing opinions do not detract from the fact that the Marshall Plan has been recognized as a great humanitarian effort. Secretary of State Marshall became the only general ever to receive a Nobel Prize for peace. The Marshall Plan also institutionalized and legitimized the concept of U.S. foreign aid programs, which have become a integral part of U.S. foreign policy.

13 BILLION DOLLARS• The Plan challenged the countries of Europe to get together and produce

a plan for regeneration, which the US would fund. Only countries which refused to co-operate with others would be refused funding.

• The British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin called the Plan ‘a lifeline to sinking men, bringing hope where there was none’ and by 12 July he had organised a meeting of European nations in Paris, which asked for $22 billion of aid.

• Stalin was invited but – seeing the Plan as a US plot to undermine the Soviet Union – he forbade Cominform countries to take part. Truman asked Congress for $17 bn, and Congress (after the scare of the collapse of Czechoslovakia in March 1948) authorised $13 bn.

MARSHALL AID• The first ship set sail from Texas to France with 19,000 tons of wheat.

Marshall Aid took the form of fuel, raw materials, goods, loans and food, US machinery to help factories to get back to normal, advisers to help rebuild transport systems. There were nets for Norwegian fishermen, wool for Austrian weavers, and tractors for French farmers. Britain was the main recipient, getting $3 bn aid. France, Italy, West Germany and the Netherlands all received huge amounts.

• Marshall Aid had a huge effect on Europe; the years 1948-1952 were a time of massive economic growth. It also stopped the spread of Communism – one of the hungry teenage boys in Germany who was given soup by American trucks driving onto his schoolyard was Helmut Kohl: who grew up to be the first Chancellor of a free and unified Germany.